Xiaomi's India revenue risen by 328% in first half of 2017

The revenue growth came as the company shipped a record high of 23.16 million devices in the quarter ended June globally, Xiaomi founder Lei Jun said in a letter to employees on Friday.Gulveen Aulakh | ET Bureau | July 08, 2017, 08:00 IST

NEW DELHI: Xiaomi’s Indiarevenue has risen by 328 per cent on year in the first half of the year, underlining the Chinese smartphone maker’s rising graph in a market which is its most crucial outside its home market.

The revenue growth came as the company shipped a record high of 23.16 million devices in the quarter ended June globally, Xiaomi founder Lei Jun said in a letter to employees on Friday. Xiaomi now plans to sell 100 million smartphones in 2018.

The company, however, didn’t give shipment numbers for India, but Counterpoint Research said the company ships on average four million smartphones a quarter. Jun added that the company’s record sales globally signified a ‘major inflexion point in its growth’ within two years of recalibration, and set a target of RMB 100 billion revenue for the present year.

“Our performance in India has been especially encouraging — revenue in the first half of the year is up 328% year-on-year and we are now the No. 2 brand in the overall Indian smartphone market,” Jun said.

“Redmi Note 4 has become the highest-shipped smartphone in the country, and Xiaomi is now widely recognised as a leading brand,” he added. Amazon.in and Mi.com sold more than 250,000 units of the Redmi Note 4 within eight minutes of launch on May 22. The company, which had started with an online only model of retail sales, has expanded sales through brick-and-mortar stores as well in a bid to tap a larger market, which has helped it make rapid growth in an intensely competitive market.

The company now expects 25% of its total sales to come from the offline model by the end of the current year, which would rise to half of the total sales within the next two to three years. Xiaomi crossed $1 billion revenue mark in India in 2016 and holds 14.2% market share in the offline space. Being one of the first Chinese companies to Make in India, the company has two manufacturing facilities currently operating at Sri City Special Economic Zone, near Chennai, where “a phone is produced every second.” The smartphone maker, which has expanded its footprint globally, has shipped 23.16 million smartphones in April-June 2017, an increase of 70% from the previous quarter.

Separately, RCom initiated contempt proceedings in the apex court against the Department of Telecommunications, blaming it for delaying a spectrum sale that would have enabled dues to be paid to Ericsson and lenders.